80 Washington Square East, NYU

Senior Honors Studio

Landscapes of Ornamentation

March 23 – May 16, 2024

Broadway Windows*

Isabela Arboleda-Ocoro 
Georgia Collyer
Oscar Garay 
Sarah Gelleny 
Nick Horcher
Kat Nestser 
Rebecca Panos
Tasneem Sarkez
Alaya Shah

Landscapes of Ornamentation is a group exhibition curated by Marie Catalano, and features the artwork of nine BFA Studio Art Majors in the final year of their undergraduate studies at the New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development’s Department of Art & Art Professions. The exhibition marks the ten year anniversary of the Senior Honors Studio in the BFA Studio Art Program. 

Curated by Marie Catalano 

Organized by Jesse Bransford - Director of Undergraduate Studies, Tammy Lee Brown - Director, Planning and Communications, Maya Pollack - Senior Honors & Studio Coordinator, Howie Chen - Director, 80WSE Gallery, Jon Huron - Manager, 80WSE Gallery, Olivia Andrews - Exhibitions Coordinator, 80WSE Gallery, Paula Rondon - Digital Studios & Technology Manager, Roxana De Leon - Exhibition Tech, Rachel Chen - Exhibition Assistant, Sophia Clinard-Rubio - Exhibition Assistant, Cynthia Li - Exhibition Assistant, Robert Rhinehart - Copy Editor, Kareem Moumina - Senior Studio Operations, Assistant Jenny Noguchi - Publication Designer, Silvia Abisaab - Studio Photographer, Carter Seddon - Gallery Photographer 

Advisory support by Nancy Deihl - Clinical Assistant Professor, Department Chair, Art & Art Professions, Steinhardt, Jesse Bransford - Clinical Assistant Professor of Studio Art & Director of Undergraduate Studies, Art & Art Professions, Steinhardt, Shadi Harouni - Assistant Professor of Video and Photography, Art & Art Professions, Steinhardt, Priyanka Dasgupta - Faculty, Art & Art Professions, Steinhardt 

Thanks to Silvia Abisaab, Olivia Andrews, Jesse Bransford, Tammy Lee Brown, Kyung-Me C, Ken Castronuovo, Howie Chen, Priyanka Dasgupta, Dana DeGiulio, Nancy Deihl, Monica Driscoll, Hina Haider Fancy, Neil Goldberg, Chase Hall, Shadi Harouni, Jon Huron, Erin Johnson, Marlene McCarty, Vonetta Moses, Lila Nazemian, Alison Nguyen, Olivia Noble, Jenny Noguchi, Laurel Ptak, Adam Putnam, Erika Ranee, Paula Rondon, and Robert Szantyr.  

A special thank you to the Chen Cui Family Art Practice Fund for their continued support of the BFA Program.

*Broadway Windows gallery is a series of five street-level display windows located at the corner of Broadway and East 10th Street. The installations can be viewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.   

Landscapes of Ornamentation brings together nine works of art spanning painting, photography, sculpture and handcraft traditions that propose non-figurative and non-human ways of representing selfhood. Drawing on personal archives and material culture, the artists in this exhibition grapple with what it means to be seen on one’s own terms. Collectively, they engage with a wide variety of cultural artifacts and subject matter to expand on signifiers of identity, challenge legibility, and contend with misrecognition.

The title Landscapes of Ornamentation comes from theorist Jose Esteban Munoz who used the phrase to discuss camouflage motifs in the work of queer artists as a way to rearrange recognizable, normative systems of order. According to Munoz, these hopeful reinterpretations of the world involve the important process of self reflection to gain new perspectives, a mode of contemplation that “speaks of a critical imagination that begins with self-analysis and a vaster social critique of how the world could and indeed should be.”* Here, the artists closely examine the visual evidence from their everyday lives and use a variety of methods to negotiate its legibility reflective of Munoz’s ornamented landscapes: they reconfigure, layer, embellish, and encode elements culled from the existing world, hiding meaning in plain sight. In doing so, they reimagine prescribed subjectivities to exceed categorization. 

The exhibition begins with a series of hybrids: compressed geographies in Arboleda-Ocoro’s double-exposed contact sheet, cultural signifiers in Sarkez’s painting, and the conflation of personal and national histories in Nestser’s miniature book. It includes visual reconfigurations of the preexisting environment, like the patterned surroundings of Garay’s church and the altered Levi’s tag in Collyer’s work. The exhibition also draws on personal and inherited objects like Shah’s chai table embellished with photographs and Horcher’s symbolically encrypted necklace. Finally, it concludes with folklore and traditional handcraft as vehicles for transformation, as evidenced in Gelleny’s band of anthropomorphized critters suggestive of other worlds and Panos’s crocheted declaration of reconstruction. Across these varied subjects and forms, the artists carve out space for multiplicity, fluidity, and expanded notions of self — aspects of a future world that might reflect their own images back to them.

*Jose Esteban Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 143.

Street view of a gallery with three large arched windows displaying artworks, including a painting of a stone building, a Levi’s jeans label piece, figurative sculptures, and a textile reading "I AM CHANGING" with yarn strands hanging down.
Street view of a gallery with three large arched windows displaying artworks, including a grid of black-and-white photographs, a pink abstract painting, and a blue-toned painting of a stone building.
Gallery window display featuring a grid of black-and-white photographs arranged in staggered rows, mounted on a white wall with accompanying exhibition text below.
Gallery window display featuring a pink-toned painting of a car wheel partially covered by a floral-patterned cloth, a small white pedestal with a vertical metal rod, and wall text printed on the glass.
A small handmade book with a woven cover displayed on a tall black metal stand, placed on a white pedestal behind a glass window with street reflections.
Gallery window display titled "LANDSCAPES OF ORNAMENTATION" featuring a painting of a stone building with yellow-lit windows under a dramatic blue sky, accompanied by wall text and a QR code below. A plaque reading “Broadway Windows” is mounted on the exterior wall.
Gallery window display showing three artworks: a large painted Levi’s jeans label, a small canvas to its right, and a photo-covered sculptural piece below, all accompanied by wall text on a white background.
Close-up of a small sculptural structure covered with family photos, magazine clippings, and cultural ephemera, displayed on a white patterned surface inside a gallery window.
Gallery window display featuring three anthropomorphic sculptures on a white platform and a black textile piece with the words "I AM CHANGING" in yellow, with yarn strands hanging down. Exhibition text is printed on the lower glass panel.
Close-up of three anthropomorphic clay sculptures behind a glass window: a moth figure with large wings and red limbs, a frog-like figure in suspenders and a cap, and a wall-mounted insect figure with antennae and translucent wings, all wearing human clothing.
A black-and-white photographic art installation displayed on a white wall. The piece consists of multiple rectangular photo panels arranged in a stepped pyramid shape. Each panel contains urban scenes, architecture, and overlapping images.
Isabela Arboleda-Ocoro 
Double Exposure: Egypt 2022/Coney Island 2018, 2022 
Inkjet prints 
78 x 115 inches 
A painting of a section of a pink van featuring a floral rose pattern on a white wall. The van's rear wheel and part of the side panel are visible, with soft, airbrushed-like pink roses covering the body.
Tasneem Sarkez 
Optimist sees a rose, 2023 
Oil on canvas 
30 x 30 inches 
A miniature handmade book with a patterned blue-and-white fabric cover, open to show handwritten and illustrated pages inside, displayed on a white surface with a plain background.
Kat Nestser 
I Am the Son of Laboring People / Я Сын Працоўнага Народа, 2023 
Linoleum and inkjet prints, fabric, wood, thread
1 x .75 x 1.5 inches  
A painting of a stone building with arched yellow-lit windows and twin chimneys, set against a dramatic, cloud-filled night sky and surrounded by a blue-toned landscape.
Oscar Garay 
Vista de la Antigua Iglesia, 2023 
Acrylic on canvas 
60 x 48 inches
A painting of a Levi Strauss & Co. jeans label, featuring the classic brown leather patch with red text and graphics, including two horses pulling in opposite directions on a pair of jeans. The label displays "501® W34 L32" and is bordered by a denim-like blue frame.
Georgia Collyer 
Industrial Strength, 2023 
Oil on canvas 
38 x 46 inches 
A small, rectangular, open-frame structure covered with printed photographs and magazine clippings featuring people, text, and patterns, displayed on a white pedestal.
Alaya Shah 
What am I But a Collection of my Objects; Gathering, 2023 
Wood, wallpaper, inkjet prints  
20.5 x 20 x 10 inches
A small painting depicting a dark braided cord necklace with a circular pendant, resting on draped fabric in shades of blue and gray.
Nick Horcher 
Lebanese Gold; الجمهوريّة اللبنانيّة, 2023 
Oil on canvas 
8 x 6 inches
Three anthropomorphic clay sculptures: a moth figure with large wings and red limbs, a frog-like figure in suspenders and a cap, and a wall-mounted insect figure with antennae and translucent wings, all wearing human clothing.
Sarah Gelleny 
Proper Gentleman, 2023 
Glazed ceramic 
25 x 19 x 16 inches 
A rectangular black textile piece with the words "I AM CHANGING" in yellow yarn, mounted on a wall with loose strands of yarn hanging down toward the floor.
Rebecca Panos 
I AM CHANGING, 2023 
Yarn 
60 x 48 inches